


Who tops most in Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter? Apparently, neither.

by bafflinghaze



Series: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter Specific Statistics [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M, Meta, Nonfiction, Observations Only, statistics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-19
Updated: 2019-05-19
Packaged: 2021-02-07 08:57:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 958
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21455416
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bafflinghaze/pseuds/bafflinghaze
Summary: What it says on the tin!Four years ago, in 2015, snowgall made an analysis aboutwho topped more in drarry fanfics. They found that the ratio between who topped was starting to even out.Since then did that trend continue? Featuring graphs inside (using data as from prior May 2019).
Relationships: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter
Series: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter Specific Statistics [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1546681
Comments: 16
Kudos: 31





	Who tops most in Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter? Apparently, neither.

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally posted [here on my tumblr](https://bafflinghaze.tumblr.com/post/184984884503/who-tops-most-in-draco-malfoyharry-potter), and is moved here for posterity.

Four years ago, in 2015, [snowgall](https://archiveofourown.org/users/snowgall) [](https://tmblr.co/mBmL9Nizp-TjiDqhdcSGz9g)made an analysis [about who topped more](https://snowgall.tumblr.com/post/113955363434/who-tops-more-draco-or-harry) in drarry fanfics. They found that Harry topped _much_ more frequently overall, but also that the ratio between Harry topping and Draco topping was starting to even out, and potentially trend towards parity.

So. Four years have passed. Did that trend continue? Arguably, _no!_

First, I’ll give a brief details on my method, and how it’s different from snowgall’s. Then, all the graphs! There will be some open questions. And at the very end, I’ll include links to the data files that I used, so that anyone else can poke at the data too.

Contents: Method Overview | Results | Discussion | Data and code links 

* * *

# Method Overview 

Here, I looked at all the (publicly-accessible) [completed works in the Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter tag on AO3](https://archiveofourown.org/works?utf8=%E2%9C%93&work_search%5Bsort_column%5D=revised_at&work_search%5Bother_tag_names%5D=&work_search%5Bexcluded_tag_names%5D=&work_search%5Bcrossover%5D=&work_search%5Bcomplete%5D=T&work_search%5Bwords_from%5D=&work_search%5Bwords_to%5D=&work_search%5Bdate_from%5D=&work_search%5Bdate_to%5D=&work_search%5Bquery%5D=&work_search%5Blanguage_id%5D=&commit=Sort+and+Filter&tag_id=Draco+Malfoy*s*Harry+Potter), using[ this python code](https://github.com/radiolarian/AO3Scraper) to scrape all those fics. From there, I looked at all the **tags**: to see if they mentioned:

  * who topped/ who bottomed,
  * if there was switching (either with the Switching tag, or with character(s) tagged as both bottoming and topping),
  * or if there was mention of “Anal Sex”.

This relies on people _tagging_, and so is the main limitation of this analysis: i.e., with non-tagging, or non-standard tagging. Since I was scraping AO3, the following analysis has 27615 drarry fics! I _didn’t_ use AO3′s tag search, since searching for “Top Draco” for example sometimes picks up fics _without_ top Draco.

In contrast, snowgall used all the fics that they read, as well as [capitu](https://capitu.livejournal.com/)’s recs, and at the time, the recs by [@gracerene09](https://tmblr.co/mg7XsV_Qxss4Loio1R0b27g), and together they collected nearly 1500 drarry fics. Although they have less fics in total, they benefit from thorough categorisation.

Now, without further ado...!

* * *

# Results 

##  Who tops? 

If we look at all the completed fics, _neither_ Harry nor Draco top—according to the tags! And overwhelming number of fics are not tagged any way:

Even when we look at just the explicit and mature rated fics, the conclusion is the same, suggesting that (1) people tend not to tag anal sex and/or (2) writers like to write non-penetrative sex:

## Who _actually_ tops the most when topping/bottom is relevant?

Here, the answer is **Harry Potter**—probably! There are almost 1.5-times more fanfics tagged with Top Harry/Bottom Draco compared to those with Top Draco/Bottom Harry.

Almost half of fics tagged for penetrative sex have _no_ designation tags. I hypothesise that such fics are (mostly) written by authors who do not care who tops or bottoms, but answering this would require delving into the data one-by-one.

## Trends over time

Snowgall hypothesised that the proportion of bottom!Draco to bottom!Harry was beginning to balance out. Here, we find that it _did happen!!!_

...and then it stopped and reversed.

Snowgall’s analysis was done in 2015, with fics up to 2014. In the graph above, 2014 _was the year_ when the number of top!Draco tagged fics was equal to the number of top!Harry tagged fics. But after that, top!Draco fics started to lag behind top!Harry fics again. In 2018 (just last year!) the proportion of top!Harry fics was at its highest since half-a-decade ago.

Note, the number of fics in 2019 is less, since the year is not halfway done, yet. However, so far, it looks like top!Harry fics continue to take the lead—and as of May 2019, completed top!Harry fics currently _surpass _“Anal Sex” tagged fics.

* * *

#  Discussion 

Key results are:

  * Most fics don’t tag either way
  * For fics that do tag, Harry tops the most
  * In 2014, Draco topped the most
  * Now, the current trend is towards Harry topping more, once again

All the problems with this analysis!:

  * It relied on searching for specific tags. As can be seen by the large number of “Anal Sex” tags without designation, the _true_ result could go the opposite direction.
  * It also assumed that writers tagged correctly: some fics that have only one top/bottom also have mentions of switching in-fic that are untagged.
  * The data is only from AO3, and only from unlocked fics (as the python scrape code did not have a sign-in feature). Locked fics tend to be more explicit.
  * “Anal Fingering” tags weren’t included.
  * “Mpreg” tags weren’t included.
  * Various Dom/Sub tags weren’t included.

If those other tags were included, we could have a more nuance view. However, just because some is tagged mpreg doesn’t automatically imply bottoming, and similarly with dom/sub tags. This would be future work if the demand is there! 

Another thing we could do is scrape through the fic itself, looking for phrases of penetrative sex: this won’t mark who tops or bottoms, but it could pick up fics with Anal Sex that are untagged, and it could mean that we could go through those fics by hand.

**By scraping AO3, we were able to analyse over 20 000 fanfics. Top Harry fics outnumber top Draco fics, and this trend looks set to continue. However, we see that overall, the fandom doesn’t have a majority on who tops and who bottoms, and seems to prefer none of these altogether.**

* * *

#  Data and code links 

  1. Data was collected using the **AO3Scraper by radiolarian and ssterman, URL https://github.com/radiolarian/AO3Scraper **(2018)**. **I modified their ao3_get_fanfics.py code a little to *not* retrieve the first chapter text.
  1. All the data that I scraped can be found in this **[google drive folder](https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1FEWx5ZTkOr4DJrUDDHMRCIhP47YY3uP6?usp=sharing) **(2019). Scraping took many, many hours, so please use this data to save time. The python file I used to analyse the data and plot the graphs is also in the google drive folder.
  2. And snowgall’s analysis: <https://snowgall.livejournal.com/8533.html> (2015)

  


**Author's Note:**

> Given that the data was from back in May 2019, it is entirely possible for the trend to have changed, at least for the year.
> 
> For other people's thoughts on this, I would recommend, if only you wish, to check out the reblogs on the [original tumblr post](https://bafflinghaze.tumblr.com/post/184984884503/who-tops-most-in-draco-malfoyharry-potter).


End file.
